Green Mountain Audio at RMAF

I spent a lot of time with Roy in the Callisto room. He didn't play Europas for comparison, but my impression is that the Caliisto's are more "refined" (not sure how to explain that). I suspect they have more and slightly deeper bass, but hard to say for sure without a direct comparison. Apparently they will play louder. Also, the Callisto is now $2900 as the cost of raw materials for the cabinet has gone way up. I came to the show hoping that the Callisto would be the upgrade I'm looking for, but left feeling that it's probably not a big enough improvement to justify the expense.

I spent only a couple of minutes in GMA's Continuum room, but much longer in the Audio Magic room, which also had Continuums. Pretty great sound I thought, though I felt the system may have suffered from too much silver, which is Audio Magic's thing. Sounded a touch "cold".

The Calypso was nice looking in that odd, GMA way. The Pico line will have more traditional looks, thankfully.

I noticed on another thread that you said that you thought the Europas were perhaps a little unrefined for classical music.
That hasn't been my experience, but I do think that they are brutally honest about upstream equipment and recording quality.
I also agree that at $2900 the callisto has vaulted several price brackets, so it's going to be up against much stiffer competition than my $900 Europas. I'm afraid that price increases may kill GMA's customer base.

I emailed Janet Lynn, CEO of GMA and she verified the price increase to $2900 on the Callisto. Packing and material costs have a huge impact on costs. I wonder if this will be a trend with all manufacturers with the rise of fuel and transportation costs nation wide.

Great speakers but - raw materials and packing/shipping costs on a 2 way monitor up $600 from April 2005 ??? - gimme a break!!!!

I think I agree with Opalchip. My guess is that GMA are moving from pricing based on a profit margin to pricing based on what the market will bear.

That's a fully justifiable decision for them to make. If they think $2900 Callistos will sell against their competition then good luck to them. It is every business' right to charge what the market will bear for a product regardless of the cost of production of that product.

I can say, however, that the chances that I trade up in from my Europas is now absolutely nill.